The legal fight over Prop. 4 has cost Utah taxpayers nearly $2 million and counting for a case the Legislature has lost at nearly every turn.
On Wednesday, Republican leaders at the Utah Capitol said they were shelving plans to push forward with a proposed amendment to Utah's Constitution that would let lawmakers override voter-approved ballot initiatives. Instead, they said they were content to let the yearslong legal battle over Prop. 4 play out.
The tab for Utah taxpayers has topped about $1.86 million. That tally covers legal work and expenses since the suit was filed in 2022.
Prop. 4 created an independent redistricting commission to draw the state’s political maps during the once-a-decade redistricting process and banned partisan gerrymandering. In 2020, the Republican-controlled Legislature repealed Prop. 4 and replaced it with SB200, reducing the commission to a purely advisory role and eliminating the ban on partisan gerrymandering.
In 2022, a coalition of voters and good-government groups, including the League of Women Voters of Utah and Mormon Women for Ethical Government, sued, arguing that the repeal of Prop. 4 violated several provisions in the Utah Constitution.
Instead of using the Utah Attorney General’s Office or their own in-house lawyers with the Office of Legislative Research and General Counsel, lawmakers hired Consovoy McCarthy, a boutique law firm based in Washington, D.C. Tyler Green, a partner who was Utah’s solicitor general from 2015 to 2020, is the lead attorney for the legislative defendants.
Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson, the other named defendant, is represented by the Utah Attorney General’s office.
According to invoices obtained via an open records request, the Legislature paid Consovoy McCarthy just over $1.859 million for Prop. 4 litigation between January 2023 and April 2026.
Attorneys for the firm are charging lawmakers anywhere between $595 and $700 per hour.
Spending first spiked in November 2024—$77,541—after Amendment D was bounced from the ballot for failing to meet constitutional publishing requirements. Multiple attorneys logged heavy hours preparing for a January 31, 2025, hearing. The firm billed the Legislature another $31,692 in December 2024 and $53,824 in January 2025.
As the parties waited for Judge Gibson to issue her decision in the case, billing cooled significantly. Consovoy billed little or nothing most months—$3,637 total for February, June and July and nothing in March and May.
The exception was in April when the judge requested supplemental briefs, which produced a $40,243 invoice.
On August 25, Third District Judge Dianne Gibson issued a sweeping judgment, finding the Legislature stepped beyond its constitutional authority when it repealed Prop. 4 and replaced it with SB200. The ruling also struck down the 2021 congressional map.
Legal costs exploded.
The firm added three attorneys to the team at $595 an hour. August’s invoice hit $111,396 for 153 hours.
The single largest bill landed in October 2025, totaling $587,112. That included $353,199 for 577.8 hours of legal work and $234,923 in expenses tied to a late-October hearing over the Legislature’s remedial map and the plaintiffs’ alternatives.
For that hearing, the firm brought in three experts: Caltech statistician Jonathan Katz, BYU political scientist Michael Barber and political analyst Sean Trende, who drew the five map proposals put forward by the Legislature after Gibson’s ruling.
Barber billed $68,625 plus $1,046 in expenses; Katz invoiced $14,038. No itemized breakdown was provided.
Trende was hired the day after Gibson’s ruling invalidating the 2021 map. Between Aug. 26 and Oct. 27, he logged 264.75 hours at $500 an hour for a total of $132,375. He was also reimbursed $2,686 for expenses, including $2,518.88 for a four-night stay at the Grand America Hotel during the map hearings.
In January 2026, the Legislature also paid Trende $3,750 directly.
On Nov. 10, Gibson rejected lawmakers’ replacement map for not following Prop. 4’s guidelines and adopted a map proposed by the plaintiffs, which created a Democratic-leaning district in Salt Lake County.
Lawmakers tried several tactics to pause or appeal the ruling, including a December special session to push back congressional filing deadlines to buy more time.
On Feb. 20, 2026, the Utah Supreme Court dismissed the Legislature’s appeal.
Post-ruling legal costs and expenses totaled $385,350.
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